Video: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on “an implicit political victory for our people”

In New York City last week, Library of America Board member Henry Louis Gates, Jr. gave a rousing account of his work as Director of The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University during which he told a capacity crowd at the Century Association, “I think that the last barrier for African-Americans to cross in terms of victory over racism will be the barrier of intellectual prejudice—the belief that somehow we are naturally inferior.”


Video: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on May 26, 2015 (5:05)

Gates’s remarks came in a conversation with businessman and investor Glenn Hutchins, who supports the Center through his Hutchins Family Foundation. The May 26 program was a co-presentation of The Library of America and The Hutchins Center.

Prompted by Hutchins, Gates looked back to the late 1960s, when elite universities in the U.S. first began to acknowledge the need for African American studies as a discipline. He explained, however, that at the time he and many of his peers “didn’t know what it meant create a real academic department,” and that a number of the initial African American studies programs “were embarrassments, really, academically. They were created so the students would not blow up the library or burn it down.”

For that reason, Gates continued, he had specific ambitions when Harvard University recruited him to rebuild what was then called the Department of Afro-American Studies in 1991.

“To me, creating an academic entity at one of the world’s greatest institutions, full of brilliant people—white and black, gay and straight, American, European, African, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, wherever they came from—built on the most sound and rigorous academic principles, would be an implicit political victory for our people.

“And that’s what I set out to do.”

Watch the complete program on The Library of America’s YouTube channel.

Related post:
Photo Gallery: Capacity crowd joins Library of America for Henry Louis Gates, Glenn Hutchins talk

Photo Gallery: Capacity crowd joins Library of America for Henry Louis Gates, Glenn Hutchins talk

An enthusiastic and engaged crowd turned out last Tuesday, May 26, for a wide-ranging conversation between public intellectual Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and businessman and investor Glenn Hutchins at The Century Association in New York City. The program was a co-presentation by The Library of America and The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

The editor of The Library of America's Frederick Douglass volume, co-editor of Slave Narratives, and a member of its Board of Directors since 1997, Gates is the Director of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. In his remarks Gates recounted the Center’s modest beginnings nearly a quarter-century ago and his subsequent collaborations with Hutchins, who supports the Center through his Hutchins Family Foundation.

After Gates described his hope that the Center will expand from its base in the arts and social sciences into public policy, he and Hutchins led the audience through a spirited discussion of questions surrounding affirmative action and access to higher education, among other topics.

Watch this space for highlights and a complete video of the program, and in the meantime, enjoy the following photo gallery featuring Library of America friends and family who came out for a stimulating evening.

All photos © Star Black.

Library of America Trustee Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
and Glenn Hutchins at The Century Association
in New York City on May 26, 2015.

Library of America Fellow Claudia Plottel and Library of America
Board Chair-elect Elizabeth W. Smith.

Anne Metrailler, Metropolitan Museum of Art President
Emily Rafferty, Library of America President Cheryl Hurley,
and Sheila Martin.

Hutchins Center National Advisory Board members Bennett Ashley (L)
and Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn (R) with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (C).

Library of America Trustee Candace Wainwright and
Library of America Fellows Andrea Stillman and William Buice.

Library of America supporter Janice Bennett and
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture.

Hutchins Center National Advisory Board member Lewis P. Jones III
and Library of America Trustee Emme Deland.

Library of America Publisher Max Rudin
and author Susan Cheever.

Authors Robert and Ina Caro.

Rose Styron and newly-elected Library of America
Trustee Joanne Freeman.

Max Rudin (lower R) introducing the program on May 26, 2015.